The tone of many of the tributes being heard or published outside of Israel about the passing of Shimon Peres have focused almost entirely on his advocacy for peace. As a column by the New York Times’ Roger Cohen demonstrates, a lot of the honor being heaped on his reputation is intended as a criticism of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—and, implicitly, on the majority of Israeli voters who continue to reject idealistic if naïve belief that optimism about Palestinian intentions or even that of Iran should dictate the Jewish state’s policy choices. Many of those lauding Peres are telling us that, in burying Peres, Israelis are not just saying goodbye to the last of their founding fathers but to the very idea of peace.

This is wrong, not because Peres’s ideals are unworthy of praise, but because it is possible to think well of a man even if the actions for which he is most remembered were a disaster. While both Israelis and Americans are united in mourning Peres, most of the former are paying homage to him in spite of his role as the principal architect of the Oslo Peace Accords; not because of them.

“This was an opportunity for us, as representatives of the people of Ontario, to come together to take action on the rising prevalence of Islamophobia and hate-motivated crime in our Province,” noted Horwath. “Celebrating Islamic culture, history and the contributions of people of Islamic heritage to our society is an important step that we need to take. Learning about each other and celebrating our diversity is a meaningful and effective way to combat hatred.”

London-Fanshaw MPP Teresa Armstrong, who introduced the Bill earlier this week, added that the NDP will not give up the fight to establish October as Islamic Heritage Month.

“I am very dedicated to seeing this Bill become law and I know Andrea is too,” said Armstrong. “We will do whatever it takes to see October become Islamic Heritage Month in Ontario.”

The Ontario NDP has been working diligently to find ways to address racism, from calling for an end to arbitrary, race-based police street checks (carding), to pushing the Liberal government to finally establish the Anti-Racism Directorate.

“This is about building a better future for all of our children,” continued Horwath. ...

The world’s top female chess players reacted with horror Thursday after being told they must compete at next year’s world championship wearing a hijab.

Within hours of Iran being announced as the host country, the event was plunged into crisis as it emerged that players taking part face arrest if they do not cover up.

Grandmasters lined up to say they would boycott the 64-player tournament and accused FIDE, the game’s scandal-hit governing body, of failing to stand up for women’s rights.
FIDE officials, meanwhile, called on participants to respect “cultural differences” and accept the regulations.

Hijabs have been mandatory for women in Iran since the Islamic Revolution of 1979 and the law is enforced by the country’s “morality police.”

Players claim that FIDE is turning a blind eye to sexual discrimination. Nazi Paikidze, the U.S. women’s champion, said: “It is absolutely unacceptable to host one of the most important women’s tournaments in a venue where, to this day, women are forced to cover up with a hijab.

Respect "cultural difference" is dhimmi-speak for "bow to sharia--or else."

Had Israel been involved, or had the IDF aimed one solitary munition at Aleppo, I think the response would be much different.

The international community’s condemnation of the Assad regime and Putin’s Russia is nothing compared to the vitriol leveled against Israel for its far more restrained (and completely justified) 2014 operation against Hamas in Gaza.

Unfortunately for the 250,000 residents of Aleppo, the city is not being attacked by the IDF. There are no leaflets being dropped warning civilians to evacuate areas in the line of fire. There is no “roof knocking” — where non-explosive devices are dropped on the roofs of targeted buildings to give civilians time to flee. And judging by the number of civilian casualties and the extent of the destruction in Syria, there is very little to no concern for the well-being of innocent civilians.

Aleppo is a testament to the double standards at play when it comes to the treatment of Israel’s military operations. There is, however, a caveat. The IDF should be held to higher standards than the militaries of both Syria and Russia.

Here we go again. This is like having to prove that water is wet or that Hillary Clinton is crooked, but since Barack Obama has once again affirmed that jihad terrorists are twisting and hijacking the Religion of Peace, once again it is necessary to prove that unfortunately that is not the case. Obama is right about one thing: this question matters for what strategy the U.S. and the free world should pursue against the jihadis. That’s what makes his denial and willful ignorance nothing short of catastrophic.

CNN reported Thursday that Obama said the question of whether or not to use the term “Islamic terrorist” was “sort of manufactured” issue. He claimed, yet again, that “terrorist organizations like al Qaeda or ISIL…have perverted and distorted and tried to claim the mantle of Islam for an excuse for basically barbarism and death.”

Warming to his point, Obama said: “These are people who’ve killed children, killed Muslims, take sex slaves, there’s no religious rationale that would justify in any way any of the things that they do.”

In times when the greater strength of dar al-harb necessitates that the jihad take an indirect approach, the natural attitude of a Muslim to the infidel world must be one of deception and omission. Revealing frankly the ultimate goal of dar al-Islam to conquer and plunder dar al-harb when the latter holds the military trump cards would be strategic idiocy. Fortunately for the jihadists, most infidels do not understand how one is to read the Quran, nor do they trouble themselves to find out what Muhammad actually did and taught, which makes it easy to give the impression through selective quotations and omissions that “Islam is a religion of peace.” Any infidel who wants to believe such fiction will happily persist in his mistake having been cited a handful of Meccan verses and told that Muhammad was a man of great piety and charity. Digging only slightly deeper is sufficient to dispel the falsehood.

Fortunately for Obama, most infidels are too busy fiddling with their cell phones to do any digging.

Thursday, September 29, 2016

In Australia, Yassmin Abdel-Magied, a memoirist who, at 24, published an account of her childhood titled Who Do You Think I Am? stormed out of a talk by Lionel Shriver at a local book festival. In her now-well-known account of the incident, printed in the Guardian, Abdel-Magied fumed about the novelist’s impudence for having argued that fiction is, essentially, the attempt to see the world through someone else’s eyes, and that without such attempts our ability to empathize with one another is bound to atrophy. To Shriver, this thesis was about as controversial as arguing that fruits and vegetables are an important part of a balanced diet. To Abdel-Magied, it came across like a license for cultural appropriation, yet another invitation for society’s powerful and privileged to dispossess the poor and the marginalized, in this case by stealing their stories.

It’s easy to laugh away Abdel-Magied’s rigid proposition. Follow it to its logical extreme, and you’ll find each of us advised to deliver nothing but a narrow account of her or his private life, replacing art with exact receipts of particular transactions and denouncing any attempt to imagine the lives of others—or the past, for that matter, or the future, or anything to which we can not immediately and materially lay claim in lived experience. But our mockery is misplaced, as it misses the point of what’s really going on: For Abdel-Magied, as for so many other young progressive activists everywhere from Brisbane to Boston, I is not a point of departure but a terminus, not an invitation to engage others in conversation but an invocation of self that trumps anyone and anything else. It’s an ideology rooted in a crude calculus that assigns each of us a definite value and then arranges us in binary oppositions. It doesn’t care about the content of our character, only about the color of our skin or the nature of our reproductive organs. It gives us permission to do nothing but succumb to the accidents of our birth, whatever they might’ve happened to be.

To celebrate, the two companies are offering free access to the new Rage Room on Oct. 8 from 1 p.m. to 11 p.m. It'll operate on a first come, first served basis, but just imagine how satisfying it'll be to let loose after waiting in line. And once you do get in, you'll get to smash five items - just be sure to wear closed-toe shoes.

This new Rage Room will be located inside Riddle Room at 579 Yonge St., on the corner of Dundonald. Happy violent catharsis sessions!

I can't imagine being angry enough to want to avail myself of this, um, service.

The feminist bookstore in Portlandia run by Toni (Carrie Brownstein) and Candace (Fred Armisen) is based on an actual specialty bookstore called In Other Words located in Portland's Northeast district. And this week, the staff of the real business made it clear that they don’t support the show’s further use of their store as a filming location. How clear did they make it, you ask? Well, there’s a new sign in the front window that says “Fuck Portlandia!” in big red letters with the words “transmisogyny,” “racism,” “gentrification,” “queer antagonism,” and “devaluation of feminist discourse” written underneath. The bookstore is actually part of a larger event space and community center, and the staff posted an explanation for the sign in a letter on their website. The letter is also titled “Fuck Portlandia” and it cites the production's poor treatment of their facility, staff, and neighboring businesses as reasons for cutting ties.

The staff also claims the show does actual social harm, saying it has contributed to accelerated gentrification of the city and that it presents damaging representations of queer people...

He became Kadima’s nominee for president in 2007, winning that election on the second ballot.

Even in that largely ceremonial office, he was unwilling to let the chance for a peace deal slip away so he acted. He negotiated secretly again, this time with Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, and reached a broad consensus.

The agreement, Mr. Peres later told Israeli television, was arrived at in four secret meetings in Jordan. It called for mutual recognition of “a Palestinian state” and “a Jewish state,” the latter being a priority of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The size of the Palestinian state was agreed on though the precise borders remained to be negotiated. There even was agreement on how to resolve the vexing refugee issue.

Mr. Netanyahu, however, stopped the deal at the last minute. Mr. Peres said he was perplexed as to why Mr. Netanyahu did this.

Yeah, 'twas a real "puzzlement."Here's the letter I wrote by way of explanation:

One hesitates to speak ill of the dead, but if the late Shimon Peres had one flaw, it was his willingness to put his faith in Yasser Arafat's successor, Mahmoud Abbas. Thus, while Patrick Martin may hail Peres's part in negotiating a secret "peace" deal with the Palestinian leader, and deride Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's part in scotching, it, the truth is that there's an excellent reason why nothing ever came of those negotiations. It is because, at the same time that Abbas was supposedly dealing in good faith with the egregiously naïve Mr. Peres, he was also making plans to join forces with his political rival, Hamas.

Since Hamas's raison d'etre is Israel's destruction, wiser heads than Peres' prevailed, and his "peace" deal--like all of Peres's peace efforts, included the benighted Oslo Accords--went nowhere.

It's arguably even more insidious than old Jew-hate because, in targeting ee-ville Israel (instead of ee-ville Jewry) it is not only socially acceptable, it is pretty much de rigueur for Islamists and social justice warriors.

The infamous Lipstadt-Irving libel battle gets a trim new David Hare film adaptation starring Rachel Weisz—just in time for the rise of Trump

Just in time for the rise of Trump, eh?Has the Tablet scribbler mistaken the Donald for the Ayatollah, perhaps?Nope. The latter never merits so much as a mention. Instead, the scribbler attempts to jerry-rig a connection between Trump and Holocaust denying historian David Irving in this cockamamie fashion:

Trump’s mendacity, in totality, may not be as morally hideous as Irving’s. His impulsive, indiscriminate lies are expressed not in the service of any discernable ideological agenda but rather his own personal advancement. Irving, meanwhile, carefully and painstakingly strung together a series of small, deceptively innocuous lies to advance a broad, wicked one: a conspiracy theory exonerating the most ruthless and depraved regime in human history. But if Trump’s lies are less heinous than those of Irving, he makes up for it with influence and power. Irving, after all, was widely discredited by the time he decided to sue Lipstadt, unable to find a publisher for his books, and reduced to delivering lectures at the Tampa Bay Best Western. Donald Trump is just a few mediocre debate performances and a financial crisis away from becoming the most powerful man on Earth.

Even though one could say exactly the same of Hillary Clinton--that her mendacity, in totality, may not be as morally hideous as Irving's and that her impulsive, indiscriminate lies are expressed solely for her own personal advancement--one would never try to link her to Irving, for that would be quite mad.That said, there's no denying that, thanks to Barack Obama, the POTUS now doing his utmost to get Mrs. Clinton elected, the Grandiose Holocaust-denier in Tehran is currently sitting pretty and beavering away on his own plans--nuclear ones--for launching the final Final Solution.

And I mean that literally, for while tributes continue to pour in for the late statesman and peacenik who "epitomized optimism," a reality check (from Discover the Networks) shows exactly what "optimism" devoid of a basic understanding of one's enemies gets you (my bolds):

[In 1992] more than a dozen formal rounds of bilateral talks were subsequently hosted by the U.S. State Department in Washington, DC, again with few substantive results.

Those talks, however, led eventually to a series of clandestine meetings between Israeli and Palestinian negotiators, hosted by Norway. In turn, those meetings culminated in the 1993 Oslo Peace Accords between Israel and the Palestinians. Officially titled the Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements (DOP), the Oslo agreements were founded on a renunciation of violence by both parties. Moreover, they called for a five-year interim period of Palestinian self-rule, which eventually would give way to the creation of an independent Palestinian state.

In a September 13, 1993 ceremony on the White House lawn, the Oslo Accords were signed in the presence of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, and U.S. President Bill Clinton. (The actual signatories were Mahmoud Abbas for the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), Foreign Minister Shimon Peres for Israel, Secretary of State Warren Christopher for the United States, and Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev for Russia.) Four days earlier, Arafat had also signed a letter, addressed to Prime Minister Rabin, stating specifically that:

"The PLO recognizes the right of the State of Israel to exist in peace and security."

"The PLO accepts United Nations Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338."

"The PLO commits itself to the Middle East peace process ... [and] all outstanding issues ... will be resolved through negotiation."

"The PLO renounces the use of terrorism and other acts of violence and will assume responsibility over all PLO elements and personnel in order to assure their compliance, prevent violations and discipline violators."

"Those articles of the Palestinian Covenant which deny Israel's right to exist, and the provisions of the Covenant which are inconsistent with the commitments of this letter, are now inoperative and no longer valid."

But the Palestinians never followed through on their pledge to renounce violence. In fact, during the height of the so-called "peace process" -- from 1993 to 1999 -- there were over 4,000 terrorist incidents committed by Palestinians against Israelis, and more than 1,000 Israelis killed as a result of Palestinian attacks; this was more than the total number of Israelis who had been slain by Arab terrorists in the previous 25 years, combined.

Peres-style "optimism" leads to nothing but death and destruction for Jews. But since he was a man of the Left, and his "optimism" was packaged as a ceaseless desire for "peace," he was a big hit with Barack Obama, John Kerry, Mr. and Missus Clinton and Justin Trudeau, all of whom will be traveling to Israel to attend his state funeral.

My feeling exactly. The two candidates, I thought, were equally ghastly: Trump was scrappy but semi-coherent (despite having bested a plethora of Republican rivals, debating in this type of formal setting is not his strong suit) and Hillary was a superannuated Tracy Flick (if Tracy Flick was a pathological liar who wore unflattering pant suits).

Monday, September 26, 2016

Yesterday I caught Lally Cadeau's final performance as Rose in Rose, the one-woman play written by American-British playwright Martin Sherman, and first produced in 1999 (and starred Olympia Dukakis). The Toronto show was mounted by the Harold Green Jewish Theatre Company, part of its 10th anniversary line up.Going in, the only thing I knew about the play was that it was about an elderly Holocaust survivor named Rose, and that Cadeau, who was playing the role for the second time, had received rave reviews for her performance.What I didn't know (spoiler alert) was the play's end game: to depict the state of Israel in the worst possible light; to smear it as a place where Jews, formerly the victims of Nazis, had now become the victimizers of Palestinians, who had assumed the mantle of victimhood from Jewry; to portray Israel as a land of brutes and hot heads who had turned it into a land of spoiled milk and rancid honey and who, even worse, had no legitimate claim to the land. (In one of the play's most egregious lines, Rose speaks of "ancient Palestinians," thereby implying that their peoplehood is every bit as venerable as the Jews' when in fact it pretty much dates from Yasser Arafat's arrival on the scene.)It's utter tommyrot, of course, the same old spurious, anti-Zionist talking points spewed by the likes of Max Blumenthal and Walt & Mearshimer. The problem is that they are being voiced by a lovable Bubbie named Rose who, prior to this, has endeared herself to the audience by telling us the story of her life--the shtetl in the Ukraine! the Warsaw Ghetto! the voyage on the Exodus! a new life in America!-- in all its harrowing, horrible and occasionally humorous details.When the play opens, Rose is sitting shiva for someone. At the outset, it's unclear who the dead person is. Cut to the chase (one more spoiler alert) and all is revealed towards the end. She is mourning the death of a nine-year-old Palestinian girl who has been shot and killed by--wait for it--Rose's grandson, one of those fanatical, peace-impeding "settlers." Since Rose's daughter was the same age when she was murdered by Nazis, the clear implication is that these Israelis are no better than Hitler's minions. Add a mention of Baruch Goldstein and, presto!, Israel is tarred, feathered and dispatched forthwith.Rose's other complaints about Israel: it despises Yiddish, has no respect for the culture that was wiped away by the Holocaust, and has veered far away from the Utopian--or Jewtopian--ideals espoused by the Kibbutzim.Poor Rose--and poor Martin Sherman. They would sooner blacken Israel's name than tell the truth about it--and about the "saintly" Palestinians it so venerates. And how sneaky--and hugely manipulative--of the playwright to give vent to his anti-Israel animus in this way.For, were Rose, the character as well as the play, in the truth-telling and not the anti-Israel agit-prop business, it would have to acknowledge that, in our day, the Holocaust is intrinsic to the Israeli identiy. It would also have to veer from the leftist/Islamist narrative which holds Israelis to be evil interlopers who have "stolen" the land and, in a nod to even-handedness, explain that rather than being saintly victims one and all, a good portion of them hate Jews because that's what the Koran tells them to do, and because the existence of a Jewish state on land claimed in perpetuity for Allah is a rebuke to--and a big, wet raspberry blown in the direction of--Islamic doctrine. Also, that many Palestinians, like a small but statistically significant number of Muslims around the world, are actively engaged in waging jihad against the infidel, an unpleasant truth which has seen terrorist incidents which previously had only occurred within Israel now taking place in many other cities in the West. Also, that when Palestinian terrorists murder Israelis, their bloody exploits are celebrated, and streets are named for the killers. When a one-of Israeli terrorist, Baruch Goldstein, kills Arabs, it is sincerely and wholeheartedly condemned by the Jewish state. And let's not even go into Israel's manifold contributions in the areas of science, medicine and technology, and how they continue to transform the world in unquestionably positive ways.But then, having a Rose who, say, had a grandson who worked at the Technion or who spearheaded Israeli rescue efforts following natural disasters in far-flung locales wouldn't afford the same opportunity to cast aspersions on the Jewish state and, therefore, would not have had the same anti-Zionist oomph as a Rose sitting shiva for a nine-year-old Palestinian girl offed by a Naziesque Israeli "settler."Surely I can't be the only one in Toronto who saw the play and who found its message to be utterly contemptible.

Sunday, September 25, 2016

Sporting a hijab in NDP orange, Ms. Horwath dons a symbol of the Islamist movement (and a symbol of a chick's second class status within it) to make an important announcement:

...Today we announced our plans to introduce to establish October as Islamic Heritage Month in Ontario.

All Ontarians should be able to learn about and celebrate the tremendous contributions that Canadians of Islamic Heritage have made throughout our province’s history – and the tremendous contributions that the community is making to build a better future for all Ontarians.

We have to make sure that every member of the Muslim community, and every Ontarian, feels safe and secure here in our province.

Here's a shot of some (actually, many) members of the Muslim community at this year's MuslimFest. (The woman on stage beholding the multitude is none other than Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne, on the hunt, as always, for Liberal voters to whom she can pander.) Can't say that it makes me, a Canadian Jew, feel terribly "safe and secure."

This is the awkward moment Canadian PM Justin Trudeau is left hanging by Prince George after going for a high-five.

Superstar politician Mr Trudeau might have endeared himself to millions online through his outspoken feminism, support for diversity and willingness to embrace internet memes, but it seems it takes more than that to impress Will and Kate's eldest.

But the public hasn’t heard the last of Reza Moazami. He has formally complained to the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal (BCHRT), claiming discrimination. His “religious dietary preferences” were allegedly ignored before his transfer last fall to a federal penitentiary.

Claiming he’s both a practicing Jew and a Muslim, Moazami says he was denied kosher meals and halal food while housed at the provincially run North Fraser Pre-Trial Centre during his lengthy pimping trial and sentencing process.

His culinary complaints might seem like a bad joke, but the BCHRT is taking them seriously. In a 14-page ruling this week, tribunal member Catherine McCreary allowed Moazami’s beef to proceed, while rejecting an application from B.C.’s Ministry of Justice to have the matter dismissed.

Moazami “cites numerous examples of occasions on which staff allegedly ignored or disrespected his religious dietary preferences,” McCreary ruled this week. “I cannot conclude that there is no reasonable prospect that Mr. Moazami’s complaint will be successful.”

An Iranian immigrant who arrived in Canada 20 years ago, Moazami claims his father is Muslim and his mother Jewish, and that he was “raised on Jewish customs and beliefs, including a kosher diet,” according to the BCHRT ruling. He says he “explored the Muslim faith” briefly while in custody awaiting trial, and requested halal meals before switching his focus to Judaism and asking for a kosher diet.

Eventually, the kosher meal requests were accommodated, according to this week’s ruling, but Moazami still wasn’t satisfied. He felt they “were not in line with kosher guidelines.” Specifically, he had suspicions about applesauce, cakes, muffins, bread, eggs, milk and ice cream served to inmates.

Food seems to preoccupy Moazami. During his pimping trial, he asked that B.C. Supreme Court sheriffs serve him two hamburgers over the lunch breaks, instead of the normal single serving. His lawyer specified McDonald’s Big Macs.

Madame Justice Catherine Bruce agreed to his request, and so ordered the Big Mac daily double. Curiously, Moazami never asked the sheriffs to serve him kosher or halal food, according to a BCHRT submission.

The pimp, it seems clear, is a canny, food-obsessed lunatic who knows how to game the system. But we're even crazier for handing him a forum in which to practice his lunacy and allowing him to play us for fools. And to do it under the guise of safeguarding his "human rights": that's the craziest thing of all.

Thursday, September 22, 2016

In a conversation with Ratna Omidvar, Executive Director of Global Diversity Exchange, at the 2016 Cities of Migration Conference in Toronto on March 2, 2016 (the video was published on YouTube on April 7, 2016), [Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Minister] John McCallum said that all Canadians are asked to help the government integrate the Syrian refugees in society.

He explained that the government – assisted Syrian refugees are the most vulnerable group of people, because on average they don’t speak the official languages in Canada, have “little education”, have “many many many many children”, have never been on an airplane and came from “a very vulnerable background.”

"In keeping with Indigenous protocol, I would like to acknowledge this school is situated upon traditional territories. The territories include the Wendat, Anishinabek Nation, the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, the Mississaugas of the New Credit First Nations, and the Metis Nation."

"The treaty was signed for the particular parcel of land that is collectively referred to as The First Purchase and applies to lands west of Brown's Line to Burlington Bay and north to Eglinton Avenue."

"I also recognize the enduring presence of Aboriginal peoples on this land."

And I recognize the enduring presence of Liberal guilt/self-loathing which venerates victimhood above all else.Update:From the TDSB website:

Acknowledgement of Traditional Lands and Territories

At the TDSB, it is customary to acknowledge the Traditional and Ancestral lands of Aboriginal peoples at the beginning of events, gatherings and meetings. All schools will soon begin their day with an acknowledgement of the territories for more information you can read the Board decision (on page 2) and read the AEC's report. Here are some speaking notes you can use to open your meetings and events with an acknowledgment of Traditional and Ancestral Lands.

Resources for Aboriginal Education

Decolonizing Our Schools: Aboriginal Education in the Toronto District School Board, By Dr. Susan D. Dion, with Krista Johnston & Dr. Carla Rice (The authors’ rights re this report are protected with a Creative Commons license that allows users to quote from, link to, copy, transmit and distribute for non-commercial purposes, provided they attribute it to the authors and to the report. The license does not allow users to alter, transform, or build upon the report. Learn more http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/ca/.) How to cite this document: Dion, Susan D.; Johnston, Krista; Rice, Carla, M (2010) Decolonizing Our Schools Aboriginal Education in the Toronto District School Board. (Toronto)

The Ontario Curriculum: First Nations, Métis, and Inuit Connections Scope and Sequence of Expectations

Wednesday, September 21, 2016

The recently published platform of Black Lives Matter (BLM) states that Israel is responsible for "the genocide taking place against the Palestinian people," and "Israel is an apartheid state ... that sanction[s] discrimination against the Palestinian people." These statements are anti-Semitic not only because they are false and modern versions of tradition anti-Semitic blood libel, but also because BLM selectively chooses the Jewish State out of all the states in the world to demonize. What has inspired BLM to engage in this counter-factual, anti-Semitic rant? BLM has been guided to anti-Semitism by the concept of "intersectionality."

"Intersectionality" is the idea that all oppressed peoples and categories of people share a position, and by virtue of that fact are potential allies in the struggle against their oppressors.

"Intersectionality" is a concept used to describe the ways in which "oppressive institutions" (racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, xenophobia, classism, etc.) are interconnected and cannot be examined separately from one another. The concept is credited to the legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw, writing in 1989, but it is only in recent years that it has escaped academia and swarmed into the streets.

"Intersectionality" has, however, been extended beyond individuals to types of oppression. The argument, as above, is that all oppressions "interconnected and cannot be examined separately." Thus, women can never be treated equally or fairly, if blacks face racial prejudice, and the disabled are not given sufficient support to be equal to the abled, and unless the Palestinians are liberated from the Israelis, and the Israelis are liberated from their country, their lives and their home. To make the point, the Israelis are accused of having had a hand, direct or indirect, in the oppression of blacks, women, and the disabled everywhere. So much oppression, intersectionists apparently think, can be traced back to the fraudulent Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and the International Jewish Conspiracy...

As painfully obvious as it may be, it must still be pointed out that the “everyone I don’t like is Hitler” meme trivializes the Holocaust. It is possible for a public figure to say troubling things without being a Nazi. The sort of reasoning that depicts every instance of intolerance as the first step toward genocide undermines any sense of its uniqueness. In that sense, the promiscuous analogizing of the murder of six million Jews actually desensitizes the culture to the attempted extermination of a people. The only proper analogies to Hitler are instances of mass murder, not name-calling or proposing to build a wall along a border...

Furthermore:

To deny that there is any comparison between Trump’s vulgar pronouncements and Hitler is not to excuse the former reality star. But what those who chortled along with Hillary [when she called some Trump supporters "a basket of deplorables"] or cheer Hollywood Hitler analogies need to understand is that once you declare the other side in a political debate to be that far beyond the pale, you’re left with nowhere else to go. There’s plenty that’s wrong with much of what Trump says and what he purports to stand for, but the only proper response to Hitler and his supporters is war, not a political debate. Using the Hitler analogy is a way to shut down discussion, not a way to win a democratic election. All the left accomplishes by using this kind of rhetoric is to demonstrate their contempt for much of their audience. That is the sort of thing that will make a lot of the country more rather than less inclined to demonstrate their mutual contempt by voting for Trump.

...Durban marked a turning point with the emergence of BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) campaigns, which are rooted in the strategy set out in the NGO Forum’s Final Declaration. The situation has progressively worsened, as Israel is obsessively targeted for boycott, prosecution, and condemnation in the UN, European capitals, trade unions, media outlets, and on many college campuses.

For many observers, the “Durban Strategy” marked the coming-out party for a “new anti-Semitism.” Unlike more traditional forms of anti-Semitism, which were by nature more overtly religious or racial in their blatant discrimination towards Jews, new anti-Semitism conceals the millennia-old hatred in a contemporary package, one better suited for a 21st-century audience. This anti-Semitism exploits the language of universal human rights and civil society, with NGOs publishing false and distorted allegations regarding Israel, and creating and maintaining double standards that apply only to a single country. New anti-Semitism goes well beyond any notion of legitimate criticism of Israel and its policies, and instead promulgates hateful vilification of the country, its people, and its Jewish character.

One of the reasons I have a blog is so that I can share some of the fascinating things I learn during the course of my varied and incessant reading. For example, this: In a book called They Eat Horses, Don't They?: The Truth About the French (which I picked up for a song--3 books for a buck!--at a recent Toronto Public Library book sale), one discovers the origin of Looney Tunes character Pepé Le Pew. As you may recall, Le Pew was an amorous French skunk who sounded a lot like the actor Charles Boyer. As you likely don't know (I know I didn't), the character's pungent aroma accorded with WW2 American GIs' experience of French hygiene (or the distinct--and often stinky--absence thereof):

Despite the efforts of the US military to defend French standards of hygiene, however, the mud [i.e. the fact that American GIs thought the French didn't smell good because they didn't wash enough] seemed to stick. It is no accident that in 1945 - just as the GIs were returning home - a new Looney Tunes cartoon character appeared on American television screens: Pepé Le Pew. A skunk with a heavy French accent given to strolling around Paris in the springtime filled with thoughts of 'lurve', Pepé's numerous attempts to find a mate are stymied by his rand orour and obdurate refusal to take 'no' for an answer. and - like the Gallic male stereotype - he also spends a lot of time spraying on perfume to try and put his victims off the scent. (His surname, Le Pew, was probably an allusion to the words pooh or phew, a traditional exclamation in response to a disagreeable smell. Hard as it may be to believe, linguists have spent entire careers debating its etymological origins. Some believe it derives from the Latin puteo, meaning to stink; while others maintain it comes from the Indo-European word pu, meaning to rot or decay - as in 'putrid'. The most appealing theory - although, sadly, probably apocryphal - ascribes a Chinese origin to the exclamation, namely the Confuciian saying, "He who fart in church sit in own pew'.) Most French people are blissfully unaware of the true nationality of Pepé Le Pew, since, in the French version of the cartoon, he was dubbed with an Italian accent...

So you mean to say that, in French, PepéLe Pew sounds a lot like, say, Marcello Mastroianni?No need to thank me for bringing you this crucial but heretofore obscure bit of info. I do it as a public service.Update:They Eat Horses, Don't They? mentions another occasion when an American cartoon insult was lost in translation:

The most notorious national slur against the French for their alleged uwillingness to fight derives from Matt G Groening's television cartoon series The Simpsons. In a 1995 episode called 'Round Springfield', the dour Scottish school janitor Groundskeeper Willie - who is unexpectedly saddled with the task of taking a French lesson at Springfield Elementary Schoool - addresses the class with the greeting, 'Bonjour, you cheese-eating surrender monkeys'.

Since the day it was first uttered, the phrase has been endlessly repeated as a staple in the stock arsenal of insults against the French. It became especially popular in 2003, when it was used by the conservative US columnist Jonah Goldberg of the National Review to attack France's opposition to the invasion of Iraq.

Interestingly, if you mention the phrase to a French person, he or she will look at you blankly. This is because the voice-over was modified to 'cheese-eating monkeys' (singes mangeurs de fromage), when the series was broadcast in France.

In an all-too brief appearance on the O'Reilly show last night, Mark Steyn observed that it's all but impossible for a conservative to have a debate with leftists these days because they're far more inclined to want to silence you completely than engage in a friendly (or even a not-so friendly) exchange of ideas, beliefs and opinions.

On Sunday's Meet the Press, host Chuck Todd told New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd that polls are showing a "margin of panic" among "Upper West Siders," an "East Coast freakout" about Donald Trump's popularity. Dowd explained that her liberal friends won't read any interviews she does with Trump, that "they would like to censor any stories about Trump and also censor any negative stories about Hillary. They think she should have a total free pass because as she said at that fundraiser recently, I'm the only thing standing between you and the abyss."

Ironically enough, Trump himself has a somewhat iffy grasp on the First Amendment. In a tweet last month he opined that

It is not "freedom of the press" when newspapers and others are allowed to say and write whatever they want even if it is completely false!

Actually, Mr. Trump, unless what's been said and written is actionable in some way (i.e. it's slanderous or libelous), it is "freedom of the press." And your tweet doesn't exactly inspire confidence that, if elected, you'd be willing to stand up for free speech and not give in to what sounds like a reflexive urge to curb press freedom.

Often the worst attacks on liberty are camouflaged with shining names. United Nations Human Rights Council Resolution (UNHRC) 16/18, among international governments’ worst assaults on the freedom of speech, was formally titled “Combating Intolerance, Negative Stereotyping and Stigmatization of, and Discrimination, Incitement to Violence and Violence Against, Persons Based on Religion or Belief.”

Who could be against that? Certainly not Hillary Clinton, then Secretary of State, who hosted the conference to help the UNHRC implement this resolution. She said that the United States was hosting this conference because the resolution captured “our highest values… enshrined in our Constitution.” In fact, what the Constitution protects is the freedom to criticize any idea – religious or otherwise. In fact, the Constitution forbids laws that establish any religion as beyond criticism, or as being especially protected by law.

Of course it will be no surprise that the real authors of 16/18 were members of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). Hillary Clinton was the Obama administration’s point-person in working with the OIC. Of course it will come as no surprise that the real thrust of 16/18 is preventing criticism of Islam or Muhammad. Obama himself said that the future must not belong to those “who slander the Prophet of Islam.” ...

And with Clinton and her minions on the job, you can be all but certain that it won't.

The White House press secretary said Monday the United States is in a "narrative fight, a narrative battle" with the Islamic State terrorist group. Josh Earnest, speaking with CNN host Chris Cuomo about the recent bombings in New York and New Jersey as well as the stabbing attack in Minnesota over the weekend, said the Obama administration has "made progress in debunking" the "mythology" that ISIS represents Islam in a fight against the West.'

"When it comes to ISIL, we are in a fight, a narrative fight, with them, a narrative battle," said Earnest "And what ISIL wants to do is they want to project that they are an organization that is representing Islam in a fight, in a war against the West, in a war against the United States. That is a bankrupt, false narrative. It's a mythology. And we have made progress in debunking that mythology."...

Unfortunately, because they subscribe to this false "narrative" narrative, they have made no headway whatsoever in preventing jihadis from unleashing terror on American infidels. Hence this:

ISIS has taken credit for the stabbing attack at a Minnesota mall on Saturday, which police say was carried out by a 22-year-old Somali immigrant named Dahir A. Adan. The bombings in New York and New Jersey are believed to have been related and perpetrated by a 28-year-old naturalized citizen from Afghanistan, Ahmad Khan Rahami, who remains at large.

We don't yet know who's responsible for planting two bombs--one of which exploded, injuring 29--in New York City yesterday. And while one can perhaps understand why Mayor de Blasio and the New York Times would be extra-cautious in assigning blame at this early state, there is absolutely no excuse for this whitewash of an earlier incident:

The closest New York has come to an attack was in 2010, when the police found a crude car bomb of propane, gasoline and fireworks inside a sport utility vehicle in Times Square. Although the device had apparently started to detonate, there was no explosion.

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Scaramouche is my nom de Web. My real name is Mindy G. Alter, and I like to think of myself as a free speecher with a sense of humour. My bailiwick: fighting on behalf of all the good things that free speech helps safeguard, and doing my utmost to highlight the malevolence and imbicilities of those who oppose freedom, whomever they may be.